Bangladesh Test victory has given us the self-belief, says Afghanistan coach Andy Moles

Moles is also the chairman of the selectors of Afghanistan team.

Afghanistan won first overseas Test in Bangladesh | Getty Images

Andy Moles, the interim head coach of Afghanistan cricket team, on Wednesday (September 11), said his team’s historic one-off Test victory in Bangladesh is a morale-booster for the newcomers, saying their win at the very difficult place is huge and has a lot of “self-belief” to his players.

It was their only third outing in the longest format of the game, but Afghanistan played with a lot of maturity under young captain Rashid Khan who is only 21, as the tourists recorded a massive win of 224 runs against Bangladesh to become the joint second quickest team in Test cricket.

Moles told Cricbuzz, “This Test victory was huge not just because it was a Test match win, but because it has given us the self-belief. Bangladesh is a very difficult place to come and win. Whenever I talked to the players, I tried to make the players understand and accept the importance of doing the basics for longer. We are going to (have to) do the boring stuff for longer, we are going (have to) to block the ball, and we've got to understand during the batting that we needed that time.”

He continued, “The more balls we face, the more runs we are going to make. That is the simple ideology. You saw in the last Test match. The guys who were able to bat 150-200 balls were the ones who were successful. They've got to have total trust in their defense. We are trying to make them understand that their defense has to be strong, trusted. Rotating the strike if they can do that than hitting fours and sixes would not be a problem for Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, the coach further said that he has had to work on the mindset of his players who are brought up in T20 and T10 cricket, adding: “In our culture, players are brought up in T20 and T10 cricket. That's what they play. Trying to get them to explore thinking differently about how we approach our innings is probably a challenge, but it is not difficult. It's not difficult to talk. It's very simple.”

Moles signed off by saying, “The simple thing is players must play balls, they must bat time. If they cannot do it, we won't be successful in Test cricket. If we can't bat 50-60 overs, you can't expect to make runs. The team needs to bat 130-140 overs in the first innings minimum. If we can do that, we will be successful.”

Noteworthy, Afghanistan’s will next take part in the upcoming the Tri-Nation series in Bangladesh involving Zimbabwe starting from Sunday, 15 September.

(With Cricbuzz Inputs)

 
 

By Rashmi Nanda - 12 Sep, 2019

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